


Among Friends

by Lykegenia



Series: Kitten - Cullen x Maighread Trevelyan [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Cassandra is the only one with her shit together, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Female Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining, slightly meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 16:55:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15755907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lykegenia/pseuds/Lykegenia
Summary: So, then, this was the part of the story where the two players realised the depth of their own feelings, but not the mutual nature of the regard. With sudden clarity, Cassandra saw the reason why Cole had come to her.





	Among Friends

**Author's Note:**

> Unfortunately, I use Maighread and Cullen as a dumping ground for all my issues. Oops.

Cassandra Pentaghast's armour rested on the stand in the corner of her room. Her boots were paired neatly at the foot of her bed, and she had shucked the hard outer layers of her daily attire in favour of a loose-fitting shirt and breeches, without any renegade buckles to dig in awkward places. She checked again that her door was locked, and padded over to her bed on bare feet, 0where she had left the latest Randy Dowager novel nestled under the covers. The book was part of a batch of literature she had had diverted through the port in Jader, hidden amongst requisitions that would eventually find their way to the Emprise. Today was the first day in weeks that she had managed to snatch even half an hour to herself so she could read it. With a happy sigh, she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, propped a pillow under her back, and cracked _The Grand Duke's Desire_ open to the first page.

_The storm hounded the two figures on the road, their battle-weary forms huddled against lashing, driving rain as they searched desperately for shelter. The younger of the two men, whose chiselled, handsome face was obscured with a hood, turned to his companion and said –_

“Hello!”

Cassandra yelped, dropped the book in her reach for the dagger that lived by her bedside. When she turned back again, she discovered the intruder wasn’t the glowing rage demon her instincts had prepared her for, but a boy with a lanky frame and limp, wheat-yellow hair.

“Cole!” she barked. “What have I told you?”

He twisted his fingers together, peering at her anxiously. “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I want to help.”

“I don’t need any help,” she snapped.

“Not you – you would be the one helping.”

That piqued her interest. “What do you mean?”

“You know the words that will make it better.” Once more, Cole wrung his hands together, hypnotic circling motions that ought to have been accompanied by joints popping, but which made no sound at all. “It’s too bright for me to see, the music is too loud, but I can still feel the hurt – a deep wound festering, gnawing, buried but still there. They don’t see, I can’t let them see – _why can’t you all just leave me alone!_ ”

As if she finally just noticed the weapon in her hand, Cassandra lowered her sword. “Cole, what’s happened?”

What seemed like moments later, she was striding for the Herald’s Rest. It had taken a while to persuade Cole to leave while she put on clothes suitable for going outside, but now he walked beside her, hopping every so often to keep up with her longer strides.  

“I’m glad you agreed to help,” he offered.

“I agreed to try,” she corrected. She was still confused about the spirit-boy's reasons for coming to her instead of, say, Varric.

The taproom of the tavern was quiet as she entered through the main door. With the repairs barely underway and the musty, damp smell of long disuse still lingering in the air, most patrons had found other places to be during the middle of the day, and so the guilty party was easy to spot over the clutter of makeshift tables. Blakwall, Sera, and Dorian sat in the farthest corner, cowed and sheepish even before she properly crossed the threshold.

“I’ve never seen her blow up like that,” the mage was saying. “Well, at bandits maybe, or templars, but never at us.”

Blackwall drained the last mouthful from his tankard. “She just needs time to cool down – dunno if she even realised she was in so deep until we pushed a little. It’d be a lucky man – or woman – that’s caught her eye.”

“Thought she’d appreciate the help, at least,” Sera huffed.

“What did you do?”

They all three flinched at the sound of Cassandra's voice. The effect would have been quite comical, except they were talking about the Inquisitor, who had since seemingly disappeared from Skyhold altogether. For a mage, she was uncannily skilled in stealth.

“It was only a laugh –” Sera started, but she quelled under the seeker's glare and fell silent again.

Dorian shifted in his seat. “We were only acting out of friendly concern, and we may have taken things a _tad_ too far.”

“What _happened_?”

The three looked at each other, downcast and squirming.

“We were, uh...”

“Matchmaking,” Dorian finished, with a roll of his eyes.

Blackwall frowned at him. “I wouldn’t go that far – but... it would probably count for that.”

Cassandra tapped her foot, impatience welling now that she could see the pieces of the puzzle falling into line. One thing she had learned about Maighread was how tight-lipped she was about her personal life, how defensive she could get when anyone tried to pry into past or present. These people, her companions – her friends – should have known better than to push the subject.

“You mean you were trying to proposition the Inquisitor?” she asked flatly.

Sera crossed her arms. “Everyone needs their knickers twisting once in a while, and nobody needs it more than her now that you’ve made her all fancy and responsible for saving the bloody world. It gets in your head, stuff like that – gives you itches, in the brain.”

Repressing a sigh, Cassandra rolled her shoulders and pinned them all with her best glare. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

The story emerged slowly, with many halting interruptions, but as a seeker, she knew how to follow the line of an interrogation, and the details did not remain hidden for long.  

The three of them, in an attempt to distract Maighread from her new duties as Inquisitor, had convinced her into the Herald’s Rest. Somewhere around the second round, conversation turned to relationships, past flames and new prospects. She had slouched, staring into space as the others ribbed Dorian about his flowering closeness with The Iron Bull, and whether Sera would have the guts to ask their new minstrel for a drink.

“Blackwall asked about her, and she said there wasn’t anyone in the Circle, and nobody here.” A frown passed over Dorian's face, a shadow caused by some detail he chose to hold back. “And then, true to form, this one decided to chip in with something lewd.”

“All I said was it’s no wonder she’s tense! Or – well, more or less.”

“In fairness,” Blackwall grunted, “we probably should have stopped there.”

“But you didn’t,” Cassandra pressed. “You tried to get her involved with someone, and when that didn’t work, you assumed she must already be involved in some secret affair and tried to get her to tell you who it was.”

“Good guess.”

“I didn’t guess, Cole told me,” she snapped. “And now nobody knows where she is.”

Dorian rose, an offer to help find her on his tongue, but she cut him off with a gesture.

“ _I_ will find her,” she said. “ _You_ will stay here and reflect on how spectacularly your attempt to help has backfired.”

She was comfortable giving orders. She knew what to do When demons attacked or soldiers failed to fall into line, but her steps faltered as she passed back into Skyhold's upper courtyard. “Do you know where she is?” she asked the chilly mountain air, trusting that Cole would hear. Sure enough, there was a flicker of light at the edge of her vision, and the spirit-boy stood next to her.  

“She found a secret, it helps to pretend, but the music is still there.” His head tilted, as if he were listening to distant conversation. “She hurts, but I can’t see how to help. She’s too bright – the anchor, it sings too loudly – it’s why I came to ask you.”

“Take me to her.”

It was no wonder the Inquisitor had remained out of sight of the rest of the keep. Cole led Cassandra along a complicated path to an unused level in one of the towers on the western battlements. It was one of the more badly damaged areas, and had been cordoned off for safety while Josephine waited for enough funds to repair the masonry.  

There was no door at the top of the stairs. Maighread sat silhouetted against a gaping hole in the outer wall with her legs dangling over the edge of the floor, and for an instant, Cassandra saw the way her palms pressed flat against the floor and feared she might be preparing to jump. But she turned at the sound of the seeker's footsteps, and there was no tear-stained panic on her face, no grief, only a detached, guarded curiosity for the nature of the intrusion. With a dismissive tilt of her head, she turned away again.

“May I sit?” Cassandra asked, approaching.

“If you want.”

With a slight purse of her lips at the flat tone, Cassandra edged towards the hole. She couldn’t quite bring herself to trust the splintered beams enough to perch on the very lip, so instead she sank down cross-legged half a pace further back, and winced when the floorboards creaked beneath her weight. Silence settled over them both as she tried to untangle the words on her tongue; commanding might come easily, but comforting a friend required a level of tact she did not naturally possess. Varric would have been a better choice.

 “I heard about the incident in the tavern,” she tried. When the only answer was a shrug, she tried not to grind her teeth. “It was Cole who told me. He seemed to think I could help, though his reasoning for it escapes me. I do not know what is wrong, but if you need somebody to listen, I will do so, and help as I can.”

Slightly, almost imperceptibly, Maighread turned away from the gap. A muscle worked at the corner of her mouth, the only indication of the war that must be being fought within, between the explosive force of emotion which had sent her to the tower in the first place, and the habit that needed it pressed down, kept secret, safe away from enemy eyes.

She sighed.

“When I was in the Circle, I was a librarian. Nobody ever noticed me, which was what I wanted. The irony is that now I’ve got this mark in my hand, and everybody calls me ‘Inquisitor’, I walk into a room and they all know who I am, but still no one sees _me_.”

“Blackwall and the others seemed to think there might be someone in particular you wanted to see you.”

Maighread frowned, denying the blush that crept all the way down her neck. “It… gets lonely sometimes, but… I’m not – I can’t –” A huff. “What the others were suggesting – about finding someone just for… _that_ – it’s not me, and it wouldn’t change anything anyway. That’s not what I want – who I want.”

“So there is someone. Would it be so hopeless?” Cassandra asked. Her mind whirled away to all those seemingly impossible divides in her novels, the two characters overcome by doubt only to find each other happy in the end. She bit her lip. Real life and fiction were not the same, and fairytale endings were often nothing more than smoke and mirrors, especially for those with grand titles that ate at them like the rising tide upon a shoreline.  

“Sometimes I think...” Maighread’s eyes softened, the stiffness at her jaw tempered by a quirk of the lips. “When he looks at me, I... but he - I can’t believe he’d care for me.” The smile faded like the sun behind a cloud. “I can’t.”

Lacking any eloquent way to respond, the seeker stretched out and squeezed her friend’s shoulder, a gesture heavy with solidarity. The kind of loneliness that echoed in the bones of Maighread’s words could sneak up on you, worm its way into the cracks of your mind when the dark and surrounding silence was too loud to shut it out, but while she had her faith to sustain her through to every tomorrow, she knew the woman they called Inquisitor gave up on belief a long time ago.

“Is it because you think he might –” _how to put it delicately?_ “triumph at having caught your attention?”

“No!” Shocked by the vehemence in her own response, Maighread bit her lip. “No,” she tried again. “He’s - he’s not like that, he’s... very dedicated. He works so hard, pushes himself so hard to be a better person – he's _kind_ , and just, and he has a sense of humour, though he tries to hide it most of the time.”

“Is he handsome?” Cassandra asked, teasing now.

“I -” The grin was back, though shades of wistfulness hung at the corners. “Yes, he’s handsome.”

“It sounds as though you truly care for him. What’s stopping you from pursuing him, if not his reaction to your title? You don’t have to tell me,” she added, as the Inquisitor sighed and hunched forward onto her knees.

“No, it’s alright. It’s complicated. There are things –”

A heavy step on the landing interrupted them. A tall, broad-framed figure stood in the doorway, mantled in the great fur ruff that made him instantly recognisable to anyone in Skyhold. Maighread’s shoulders stiffened, her cheeks darkened almost to sienna, and in the sudden spike of panic across her features as she snapped her gaze back to the hole in the wall, Cassandra _knew_.

“Inquisitor,” Cullen said. “There you are. I – there was some concern when you didn’t make your appointment with Lady Josephine.”

She blanched. “I completely forgot – I should probably go and make it up to her.”

“Are you well?” he asked, when she didn’t move.

“I’m fine.”

She was still turned away, so she couldn’t see what was so plain to the seeker’s sight: the worried line between the commander’s brows, the fingers drumming an agitated beat on the pommel of his sword, the desire to offer comfort held back by the need for respectful restraint, all brightened by the expression in his eyes seen only once before, after Haven, when they found her in the snow. So, then, this was the part of the story where the two players realised the depth of their own feelings, but not the mutual nature of the regard. With sudden clarity, Cassandra saw the reason why Cole had come to her, but she had come to know well the stubbornness of Cullen and Maighread both, and any interference now might only drive them further apart.

“Do you want me to handle this?” she asked of Maighread, low enough that the commander couldn’t hear. At the halting nod, she stood and dusted off her breeches, before turning to steer Cullen out of the room. She felt his reluctance in his arm, and the way he looked past her over his shoulder for one last assessment of the Inquisitor’s state of mind.

“Is there anything I can do?” he asked once they were out of earshot.

“She needs some time, some peace,” she replied gently.

He nodded. “I heard there was a fight in the tavern.”

“The situation was not quite so dire – a misunderstanding, but one that... hit deeper than intended. I will stay with her.”

The commander threw one last lingering look up the stairs, full of something very much like regret, but nodded and straightened, already compartmentalising his worry behind other, more pressing tasks that required his attention. “Very well,” he sighed. “Then I will return to my duties.”

“Cullen,” she called after him. “I think you should know, I think the Inquisitor fears you do not regard her very highly.”

He tidied away his look of blank shock quickly enough she almost doubted she had seen it. “Then I will endeavour to correct the error,” he said. “Thank you, Cassandra.”

After he had disappeared back out into the sunlight, Cassandra retreated up the stairs to find Maighread, who now sat with her knees drawn into her chest and her arms wrapped tightly around her shins as if to hold herself together. Her face still flamed, the skin tight at the corner of her eyes, motionless as she fought for self-control.

“Thank you,” she uttered, though her voice rubbed against the words.  

It might have been for the company, or the concern, or the intervention with Cullen, but it didn’t matter as Cassandra resumed her place at Maighread’s side. “You do not have to follow my advice, but I consider you a friend, so I will offer it,” she said. “I think you should tell this person how you feel. You might be rejected, and it will hurt, but you are already hurting, and at least then you will know, one way or the other.”

“That almost sounds like something Varric would write,” Maighread chuckled.

Cassandra pursed her lips. “You are not to tell him so.” A pause. “You are brave. And you deserve to be happy, for yourself, and not just for the Inquisition.”

There was no reply except the pensive nod of Maighread’s head and a slow unfurling of her limbs. It was only later, with the low sun bleeding its light over the distant mountain peaks, that the comfortable silence between them broke.

“You know, Cassandra, I think Cole might have been right.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know your feelings!


End file.
